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"At the height of San Francisco&amp;apos;s mid-Sixties psychedelic renaissance, Jefferson Airplane, the scene&amp;apos;s reigning band, often played free shows for the faithful &amp;#x2014; on flatbed trucks in the Panhandle and at be-ins in Golden Gate Park. That is where bassist Jack Casady saw his bandmate, singer-guitarist Paul Kantner, &amp;quot;at his best. He&amp;apos;d take his 12-string Rickenbacker,&amp;quot; Casady says, &amp;quot;and raise it above his head in a great, revolutionary stance. He loved that phenomenon of a huge number of people coming together with music as the foundation and the catalyst.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nKantner &amp;#x2014; who died at 74 on January 28th in San Francisco of multiple organ failure following a heart attack earlier in the week &amp;#x2014; pursued that ideal for more than 50 years: first with the Airplane, which he co-founded with singer Marty Balin&amp;#xA0;in 1965; then, after that group broke up, in the spinoff Kantner dubbed Jefferson Starship and led through multiple lineups until his passing. &amp;quot;Paul was a zealot,&amp;quot; says Airplane lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, who &amp;quot;never lost that dream&amp;quot; of a community charged by rock &amp;amp; roll, bonded by joyous rebellion and destined for a utopian future. Kantner put it this way in a 1970 Rolling Stone interview: &amp;quot;We seek to eradicate that audience-performer relationship as much as possible. That&amp;apos;s not really valid anymore.&amp;quot;\r\nWith his martial-folk style of rhythm guitar, urgent, grainy singing and complex, stridently topical songwriting, Kantner was &amp;quot;the Pete Seeger of the band,&amp;quot; Kaukonen claims. &amp;quot;The social distress of the time was the perfect storm for Paul&amp;apos;s kind of writing.&amp;quot; Kantner&amp;apos;s Airplane classics &amp;#x2014; including &amp;quot;Crown of Creation,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We Can Be Together&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Wooden Ships,&amp;quot; the last co-written with David Crosby and Stephen Stills &amp;#x2014; were turbulent, melodically eccentric anthems propelled with lysergic-blues force by Kaukonen, Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden, and fired skyward by Kantner&amp;apos;s empathic vocal ballet with Balin and acid-rock siren Grace Slick.&amp;#xA0;\r\n\r\nKantner&amp;apos;s missionary fervor was a major reason why the Airplane splintered at the end of the Sixties into side projects like Casady and Kaukonen&amp;apos;s blues duo, Hot Tuna, and Kantner&amp;apos;s own 1970 science-fiction concept album, Blows Against the Empire. &amp;quot;Paul couldn&amp;apos;t do anybody else&amp;apos;s music,&amp;quot; claims Balin, who quit Jefferson Airplane in 1971 but frequently reunited with Kantner for records and tours over the next several decades. &amp;quot;In the beginning, Paul wrote some beautiful love songs,&amp;quot; like the plaintive, jangly &amp;quot;Let Me In,&amp;quot; on the 1966 debut, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. &amp;quot;But as he went on, his songs became these epics. That became our style. That&amp;apos;s why the Airplane broke apart. We had to get away from just doing what Paul could do.&amp;quot;&amp;#xA0;\r\n&amp;quot;Paul was a lot like me &amp;#x2014; opinionated, confident and not very afraid of anything,&amp;quot; confirms Crosby, a lifelong friend. &amp;quot;But Paul wasn&amp;apos;t trying to convince you that you had to do it his way. He did think that leading by example was the right thing.&amp;quot; And Kantner led best, Crosby says, through music. &amp;quot;He was a believer in music as a lifting force. It lifts humanity up, makes it better.&amp;quot;\r\nPaul Lorin Kantner was born in San Francisco on March 17th, 1941. His father, also named Paul, was a salesman; Kantner&amp;apos;s mother, Cora, died when he was eight. Kantner attended a Catholic boarding school in Berkeley &amp;#x2014; &amp;quot;A little more vulgar version of the Jesuits,&amp;quot; as he put it in Ralph J. Gleason&amp;apos;s 1969 book The Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound &amp;#x2014; and had dropped out of the University of Santa Clara when he met Kaukonen, a new student there, in 1962. &amp;quot;He still had that collegiate look to him,&amp;quot; Kaukonen recalls. &amp;quot;But Paul was definitely existing outside the pale&amp;quot; &amp;#x2014; living in a surfer&amp;apos;s shack and profoundly influenced by Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein&amp;apos;s 1961 novel about the spiritual journey of a human raised by Martians.\r\n&amp;quot;The idealism in Heinlein infected him in the same way it infected me,&amp;quot; says Crosby, who met Kantner in 1963 when they were both aspiring folk singers living in a communal household in Venice, California. Something else the two men shared: &amp;quot;He was, as I was then, a stoner,&amp;quot; Crosby says, laughing. &amp;quot;We became good friends.&amp;quot;\r\nOne evening in 1965, Kantner &amp;#x2014; back in San Francisco &amp;#x2014; walked into a folk club called the Drinking Gourd, carrying a 12-string guitar and a banjo. &amp;quot;He had his hair down to here and an old cap,&amp;quot; Balin, who was there, told Gleason in that 1969 book. &amp;quot;I had never heard of him, but I knew he was good.&amp;quot; On August 13th, 1965, Balin, Kantner and their embryonic Airplane &amp;#x2014; with Kaukonen and original female vocalist Signe Toly Anderson &amp;#x2014; made their live debut as the opening attraction at Balin&amp;apos;s new club, the Matrix. &amp;quot;I had to encourage him to sing,&amp;quot; Balin says of Kantner now. &amp;quot;He was a little shy about it at first. But he got into it.&amp;quot;&amp;#xA0;\r\n\r\nIt was at the Matrix that Kantner first heard Slick, then the electrifying singer in another San Francisco band, the Great Society. &amp;quot;She just tore me up,&amp;quot; Kantner confessed to Gleason. Slick&amp;apos;s arrival in the Airplane (replacing Anderson in October 1966) and her searing vocal bravado on the band&amp;apos;s 1967 Top 10 singles, &amp;quot;Somebody to Love&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;White Rabbit,&amp;quot; turned the Airplane into a national phenomenon, a group of underground idealists with commercial clout.\r\nBy 1969, Kantner and Slick were the Airplane&amp;apos;s power couple, romantically involved (their daughter, China, would be born in 1971), driving the band musically and lyrically, and generating their own series of galactic-revolution albums, beginning with Kantner&amp;apos;s Blows Against the Empire, the first album to bear the name Jefferson Starship.\r\nKantner and Slick&amp;apos;s relationship &amp;quot;certainly changed things in terms of the political infrastructure&amp;quot; of the Airplane, Kaukonen admits. The guitarist also remembers Kantner as determined &amp;quot;to the point of being obnoxious in rehearsals, especially with his songs. He knew what he wanted out of them, and he would hammer us until he got it.&amp;quot;\r\nIn 1980, as an increasingly commercial version of Jefferson Starship was riding its own wave of success, Kantner suffered and survived a cerebral hemorrhage. He was more distressed by his eroding role in the Jefferson Starship&amp;apos;s direction, quitting in 1984 and legally forcing the other members of the band to cut their name to Starship. After recording a 1989 reunion album with most of the classic-lineup Airplane, Kantner relaunched Jefferson Starship according to his original science-fiction-protest vision, touring extensively and writing and releasing a 2008 album, Jefferson&amp;apos;s Tree of Liberty, on which he covered traditional and political folk songs by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie and others. &amp;quot;He was like an American David Bowie,&amp;quot; says Balin. &amp;quot;He had these mad, epic ideas.&amp;quot;\r\nKantner never stopped trying to regenerate the revolutionary nirvana of the Airplane&amp;apos;s golden age &amp;#x2014; and get his old bandmates back onstage and to record with him. &amp;quot;Over the years, Paul would always be like, &amp;apos;We gotta do this, we gotta do that,&amp;apos;&amp;quot; says Kaukonen, who runs a guitar-instruction camp in southeastern Ohio and still works with Casady in Hot Tuna. &amp;quot;And I&amp;apos;d say, &amp;apos;No, I&amp;apos;m doing this.&amp;apos;&amp;quot;\r\nLast year, Balin turned down an offer to join Kantner on a tour celebrating the Airplane&amp;apos;s 50th anniversary. &amp;quot;Paul sent me a schedule that was ridiculous,&amp;quot; Balin says, &amp;quot;every country, every night. I said, &amp;apos;Paul, you gotta watch out for your health.&amp;apos;&amp;quot; Kantner, a lifelong smoker and drinker, replied, &amp;quot;I can do that. Nothing can hurt me. I&amp;apos;m as strong as a bull.&amp;quot;\r\n&amp;quot;He did not have subtlety,&amp;quot; Crosby says of Kantner. &amp;quot;He had a very forthright approach. He didn&amp;apos;t do tender ballads. He liked songs where he could sing out strong, in full voice. He was always the toughest of us. You thought nothing could kill him.&amp;quot;\r\n&amp;quot;Paul&amp;apos;s thing was always &amp;apos;There is music left to be made,&amp;apos;&amp;quot; Kaukonen remembers. &amp;quot;And he might have been right. We will never know now.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/remembering-paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-founder-with-mad-epic-ideas-20160209>